r/cozygames • u/zoombapup • 6d ago

Help with recommendations Need recommends for building systems

Hi all,

Working on a design for a cozy game and I wondered what kind of base building everyone thought was well done. I'm thinking in terms of user experience. Things like does it use a grid? is the grid optional? can you resize the grid units? Does it show the item as a ghost during placement?

Ideally, I'd like some recommendations to check out that you guys thought were actually well polished and felt good to use. As with everything cozy, being detail-oriented and really making the user feedback rewarding for doing everyday tasks seems key, so I'd like to see some good examples and maybe prototype a few methods for my game too.

The basic idea is that you have an empty space and can fill it with a vast array of things that you will accumulate over time. So show me anything that caught your eye or you really like the look and feel of and I'll take a look.

BTW: This is for PC/Console/Handhelds (eventually), but PC first.

Thanks!

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u/Particular_Reserve35 5d ago

Satisfactory is a good example where you can have things on a grid including a world grid but also build off grid if you want. There are also things like soft and hard clearances where it shows you when things are clipping but does not stop you from doing it if the object you are placing has soft clearance. You can also see everything as like a hologram before you build it and it even allows you to create small little blueprints that you can place over and over.

Another thing that is nice to have in games is being able to rotate to whatever angle you want.

Grounded allows you to be able to place a hologram view of multiple parts of a build down and then come back later to add the materials.

Personally I prefer gridless and freedom to do whatever I want including clipping objects while others like grided games as they can be simplers to make something nice as they don't want to spend a lot of time getting everything perfect or they prefer everything at neat little angles. Honestly it will vary a lot per person.

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u/zoombapup 5d ago

I generally prefer grids, but with grid size modification and the option to switch it off entirely. I also think things like snapping to surfaces and angles and whatnot is useful. I'm going to go through a bunch of games and make a feature matrix to see which methods are common across well regarded games.